Indian Passport makeover: Orange is the new Blue

The Indian Passport has been a navy blue one ever since I’ve seen it. Indian passports are till so far issued in three colours – white for government officers, red for the diplomats and blue for everyone else. The blue passport has two categories – one that requires emigration check and one that does not.

Today, the Ministry of External Affairs has notified changes to how the Indian passport will look going forward.

Personal Details won’t be printed on the back page

The current passport had various personal details of the citizen on the back page. The back page includes the name of the spouse, the parents and the residential address of the holder of the passport. That goes away from the next lot of passport books that will be printed.

This booklet has yet not been designed, so it should be a while before it gets out into circulation. That does not mean you need to swap your booklet right away. I just hope when this happens, we will have one more blank page for us to stamp on.

When it does, you won’t be able to use your new passport as a proof of address anymore. The last page also included the Emigration Check requirement of the passport holder.

New Orange Indian Passports coming

To differentiate between Indian Passports which will have the requirement of ECR v/s ECNR, the passports which will have the condition of Emigration Check Required will now move to being printed in Orange jackets rather than the blue book it currently is.

This move should facilitate checks as it will be easier for security officials to identify which passports need an ECR review and which do not.

Bottomline

While I will continue to retain a blue book and I do hope all my readers will as well, it would be interesting to see how the new orange book would look. I think India may become the only country in the world to issue differentially coloured passports to their citizens by their technical requirement of ECR.

What do you think about the new move from the Government of India? Would you still rather have a blue book?

Comments

Just a quick update for all the kind readers & Ajay , who replied back with their suggestions. I used a simple & tight rubber band to hold the interior booklet with the cover. I had no problem while crossing immigration ( 8 times ) during this trip. In fact , while standing at IGIA’s queue in departures , I noticed that many others too had their covers detached ( with the interior booklet’s threading intact ) & had used rubber bands as well.
Thanks again.

Hi Ajay & all the readers here. My passport was issued a year ago with a slight “manafacture defect” i.e. the blue cover / jacket was not binded properly with the interior booklet , and thread tails visible outside etc. But I travelled using that almost every month.
Now I am flying out of the country after 2 days , and I just noticed that the blue cover / jacket has got TOTALLY detached from the remaining passport. The only saving grace is that the inside booklet ( including the front/last page ) has its threading absolutely intact. Has anyone ever heard or faced a similar issue ?? Any quick solution ?? P.s.- I am flying to the Schengen zone

Thanks Venkatesh. I am in India right now , and I have no clue who would provide such assistance here , that too with a weekend ahead. I hope that this doesn’t end with me being sent back from the immigration counter in India ( or worse , in Europe ).

Is the machine readable page of your passport clean? If it’s the new format passport, that page is separate from the cover, then as long as the machine readable portion is fine, you shouldn’t have an issue

Yes , mine is the new format one. The machine readable portion is fine & so is the rest of the interior booklet , with its threading completely intact. Just the cover / jacket came out. I’ve never had this issue before , thus the concern. Will update the status here soon.